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Paypal canceled people just because they were thought criminals. At the point where you become a global payment processor (Paypal, Mastercard,...) a different r

Paypal canceled people just because they were thought criminals. At the point where you become a global payment processor (Paypal, Mastercard,...) a different ruleset should apply to you: no banning unless directly criminaly charged. Because as it is now Paypal can ban you for whatever reason you want. When you become global and directly affect people's livelyhoods it should be illegal to cancel people just like that. The "it's a private business it can do whatever it wants" argument simply doesn't apply anymore (unless you want to end up with corporations for nations since you now have to bow down to private corporations if your opinions are not acceptable. In other words: corporations own your mouth, they own your speech, you cannot go against privot corps. Nightmare fuel. Well you can go against them but you will then lose all of your income which is centralized in a few global corps who also most likely share data on dissidents).

woodruffw 6y ago
Or, you know, you could just pay people with cash and checks. Every country in the world has analog public financial instruments, and most have or are developing digital instruments. We don't really need to use a Switzerland's worth of electricity to move money around.
- j0ba 6y ago
  A few years ago, I hired an African (I forget the country) on Upwork to do some image editing. When I tried to pay via PayPal, it wouldn't work for him. Instead, I sent him bitcoin. Your solution would have been to mail a check? Maybe if your imagination was better, you could see more use cases.
  - woodruffw 6y ago
    My imagination is just fine, thanks. I see a use for Bitcoin as a speculative instrument, which is how people are using it. I just don't care for that use case, and I'd rather people speculate on cold pieces of yellow rock than on proving that they can do the digital equivalent of burning car tires.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      Energy is the real measure of value, but it's hard to transact with. Both gold and bitcoin are ultimately just fungible representations of wasted energy. The question is whether bitcoin can rise to the level of thousands of years of tradition with gold, or if we'll have forgotten about it in a few decades. I'm guessing the latter because without the key property of untraceability, bitcoin isn't actually fungible.
    - alwillis 6y ago
      Bitcoin is a non-sovereign, hard-capped supply, global, immutable, decentralized digital store of value. It’s an insurance policy against monetary and fiscal policy irresponsibility from central banks and governments globally.
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    Wiretransfer solves it much cheaper/faster
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't stoop to personal swipes on HN. Your comment would be just fine with just the first part. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bhaak 6y ago
  What fascinated me about Bitcoin in the first place was the idea of having money as a first class citizen on the net. Well, we know this didn’t really became reality. Today, we still can’t easily and frictionless send money to a website. Just think about what this means for online journalism. That you mention “checks” suggests that you are a person living in the US. I can tell you that even as a European, I often hit a paywall where I couldn’t even pay if I were willing to go through the hassle of paying by credit card. PayPal helps a bit but having one centralized service means there is no real competition.
  - xur17 6y ago
    > I can tell you that even as a European, I often hit a paywall where I couldn’t even pay if I were willing to go through the hassle of paying by credit card. And even if you can pay, you have to give your full name, address, phone number, and credit card number in order to be able to pay. Then the merchant has to pay a ~3% fee to accept the payment, run your personal data through some machine learning algorithm to try and prevent someone from using your stolen credentials, and still receive chargebacks some percentage of the time. I really wish there was a widely adopted payment system that acted like cash on the internet (instant, irrevocable, low fees, privacy preserving, stable value). Crypto actually has a chance at solving this, but nothing so far actually checks all of these boxes as far as I know.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tylerhou 6y ago
> Paypal canceled people just because they were thought criminals. No, PayPal cancelled Gab because a verified, active user murdered 11 people and injured 6 others in a synagogue shooting. The same user constantly posted neo-Nazi and anti-semitic hate speech. "Thought-crime" is a bit too charitable for a neo-Nazi murderer, don't you think? Before you argue that Gab did nothing wrong — 100% they did. They gave the shooter a platform and credibility for ideas that should have died with WWII.

woodruffw 6y ago

Or, you know, you could just pay people with cash and checks. Every country in the world has analog public financial instruments, and most have or are developing digital instruments. We don't really need to use a Switzerland's worth of electricity to move money around.

j0ba 6y ago
A few years ago, I hired an African (I forget the country) on Upwork to do some image editing. When I tried to pay via PayPal, it wouldn't work for him. Instead, I sent him bitcoin. Your solution would have been to mail a check? Maybe if your imagination was better, you could see more use cases.
- woodruffw 6y ago
  My imagination is just fine, thanks. I see a use for Bitcoin as a speculative instrument, which is how people are using it. I just don't care for that use case, and I'd rather people speculate on cold pieces of yellow rock than on proving that they can do the digital equivalent of burning car tires.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Energy is the real measure of value, but it's hard to transact with. Both gold and bitcoin are ultimately just fungible representations of wasted energy. The question is whether bitcoin can rise to the level of thousands of years of tradition with gold, or if we'll have forgotten about it in a few decades. I'm guessing the latter because without the key property of untraceability, bitcoin isn't actually fungible.
  - alwillis 6y ago
    Bitcoin is a non-sovereign, hard-capped supply, global, immutable, decentralized digital store of value. It’s an insurance policy against monetary and fiscal policy irresponsibility from central banks and governments globally.
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  Wiretransfer solves it much cheaper/faster
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't stoop to personal swipes on HN. Your comment would be just fine with just the first part. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
bhaak 6y ago
What fascinated me about Bitcoin in the first place was the idea of having money as a first class citizen on the net. Well, we know this didn’t really became reality. Today, we still can’t easily and frictionless send money to a website. Just think about what this means for online journalism. That you mention “checks” suggests that you are a person living in the US. I can tell you that even as a European, I often hit a paywall where I couldn’t even pay if I were willing to go through the hassle of paying by credit card. PayPal helps a bit but having one centralized service means there is no real competition.
- xur17 6y ago
  > I can tell you that even as a European, I often hit a paywall where I couldn’t even pay if I were willing to go through the hassle of paying by credit card. And even if you can pay, you have to give your full name, address, phone number, and credit card number in order to be able to pay. Then the merchant has to pay a ~3% fee to accept the payment, run your personal data through some machine learning algorithm to try and prevent someone from using your stolen credentials, and still receive chargebacks some percentage of the time. I really wish there was a widely adopted payment system that acted like cash on the internet (instant, irrevocable, low fees, privacy preserving, stable value). Crypto actually has a chance at solving this, but nothing so far actually checks all of these boxes as far as I know.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tylerhou 6y ago

> Paypal canceled people just because they were thought criminals. No, PayPal cancelled Gab because a verified, active user murdered 11 people and injured 6 others in a synagogue shooting. The same user constantly posted neo-Nazi and anti-semitic hate speech. "Thought-crime" is a bit too charitable for a neo-Nazi murderer, don't you think? Before you argue that Gab did nothing wrong — 100% they did. They gave the shooter a platform and credibility for ideas that should have died with WWII.